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Donald Kirk

Waging Star Wars

The heavens far above the stratosphere may be the battleground in star wars against North Korea's vaunted hypersonic cruise missiles. The U.S. command showed off its high-flying answer to attacks from the North while U.S. and South Korean forces were winding up their first full-scale joint war games in six years.

2023-03-28 18:01

'Evil empire,' 40 years later

The U.S. and the Soviet Union were still waging the Cold War, immersed in concerns about arms control and nuclear proliferation, when President Ronald Reagan, on March 8, 1983, warned against “the aggressive impulses of an evil empire” in “the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” Forty years later, those words ring truer than ever.

2023-03-14 17:13

China as 'honest broker'

WASHINGTON - We don't have to be told how disappointing the Chinese as moderators or hosts in negotiations are. The failure of the six-party talks on North Korea, run by China from 2003 to 2007, should be enough to convince anyone that talks hosted by Beijing will go nowhere.

2023-03-02 16:50

Waging balloon warfare

NEW YORK - An entire new menace now threatens the world's warring factions. Who would have thought balloons would raise such a ruckus?

2023-02-21 16:50

Perils of royalty

LONDON - Prince Harry's book “Spare,” about his terrible tiffs with higher-ups in the British royal family, including the “heir” to the throne, elder brother Prince William, invites comparisons with another “royal family,” that of Kim Jong-un, up in North Korea. Had Prince Harry lived in another age, he would have suffered the same consequences as did the relatives of Kim Jong-un.

2023-02-02 17:00

Japan's military renaissance

WASHINGTON - Watch out for Japan. Also watch out for China. And watch out for nukes. These days, in Northeast Asia, everyone has to watch out for everything with increasing trepidation.

2023-01-17 16:50

Ancient history, modern kingdom

LONDON - Mired in scandal and gossip, the Brits still seem to love their royal family. Not even the black sheep princes of the realm can stop pollsters from discovering that a majority believe the monarchy is fine even if it's sopping up more than $100 million a year in taxpayer money.

2023-01-05 16:51

Winners and losers in war and peace

“All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Maybe we should go back to that maxim about happy and unhappy families at the opening of "Anna Karenina," the Russian classic by Leo Tolstoy. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy victors in war are alike, but every unhappy loser is unhappy in his or her own way. Let us consider how wars have ended since the victory of the allied powers over Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in 1945.

2022-12-29 16:50

Hong Kong's media hero

The history of the media is full of stories about journalists who defied authority, risked death covering wars and sought stories behind cover-ups. Few media heroes can match Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily, a Hong Kong paper that was shut down last year after 26 years defending Hong Kong's democracy movement and offending China's leadership in Beijing.

2022-12-15 15:45

Protests in China, Iran

Protests in China and Iran come as a surprise. One would have thought those bastions of authoritarian rule would have been almost the last places on Earth where dissidents would defy the systems in which they exist. The dictators at the top of the ruling structures of both countries count on their security forces to round up the miscreants and on their courts to mete out drastic sentences, including death.

2022-12-01 17:00

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